


A Tiny Turn of Fate

by ZionAngel



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZionAngel/pseuds/ZionAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Dark Castle, some weeks after Rumpelstiltskin spared the thief’s life, Belle goes up to his work room, only to discover a mess from a potion gone awry, and a shy little boy hiding under the table.  (AKA: Belle meets bb!Rumple)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tiny Turn of Fate

Belle climbs the winding staircase to Rumpelstiltskin’s tower.  A strong smell of herbs and potions and magic reaches her nose, and she squints in the sunlight.  This is the only room in the entire castle that he frequents that has open windows and natural light.

“Rumpelstiltskin?” she calls, not seeing him right away.  She moves further into the room, looking around.  He must be here, there are bottles of herbs and other potion ingredients all over his table, as they usually are when he’s in the middle of working some grand bit of magic.

“Rumpelstiltskin, a dove brought you a message.”  Still, she sees nothing, and hears no response.  She moves toward his work table in the center of the room, looking for some clue.  “Where are you?”

“How do you know my name?”  The tiny voice from beneath the table scares her half to death, and when she stoops to look, she finds an equally tiny child hiding there, curled in on himself, hugging his knees to his chest.

She stares at him with wide eyes.  “ _Your_ name?”  The boy nods, his eyes shimmering and his lip trembling as if he is fighting tears.

Belle stands straight again, taking a much closer look at her surroundings.  A few of the bottles on the table are knocked over, and a spot on the wood near the edge is charred and stained a deep violet color, as if something was spilled.  Off to one side are half a dozen spellbooks, some in languages she doesn’t even recognize, and several sheets of parchment with hand-written scribbles on them.  She can barely make out his scrawling handwriting, but a few terrifying words like _youth_ and _revert_ and _memory_ stand out.

A hot flush of panic runs through her, and she has to steady herself on the table with both hands.  The little boy under the table is Rumpelstiltskin.  The all-powerful sorcerer feared across lands near and far, reduced to a child, who, from the sound of it, has no memory of who she is, or of anything that has happened to him in the last gods-only-know how many centuries of his existence.  And she has no idea when or even _if_ the spell will wear off, or what lasting consequences this may bring.

“Do I have to live with you now?” the little voice squeaks from under the table.  Belle takes a deep breath and schools her features, not wanting to worry him unnecessarily and cause more problems, before she crouches down to look at him again.

“Why –” her voice catches, dry and anxious in her throat.  “Why would you have to live with me?”

He stares at his shoes, miserable and meek.  “My papa made me go live with my aunts because he didn’t want me.  Do they not want me anymore, either?”  He looks up at her, so pleading and broken that it breaks her heart.  “Do I have to live with you now?”

“Oh, sweetheart…” she chokes out, fighting to maintain her composure.  Is this really what Rumpelstiltskin faced as a child?  So unwanted and alone?  She forces a smile, mustering up the courage for a little white lie.  “No, sweetheart, your aunts love having you.  They just… had to go and do some important work in town.  I’m just going to watch out for you until they get back.  And then when they’re all done, you’ll all go home again.”

He looks relieved, and though he still hugs himself, his shoulders relax, grateful not to have been abandoned.

“Why don’t you come out of there, Rumpelstiltskin?” she coaxes, reaching out a hand.

“Everybody calls me Rumple.”

She smiles at that.  She always did think the name was just a bit of a mouthful.  “Hello, Rumple, my name is Belle.”  He smiles, just a little, over his knees.  “Why don’t you come on out here?  It’s not much fun to sit under the table all afternoon.”

He watches her warily for a long moment, like a wild animal in the woods, before he finally, slowly crawls toward her.  With a gentle, reassuring smile, she lifts him up under his arms and sets him down on the edge of a less cluttered table nearby.  She pulls a chair over, and sits in front of him, looking up a bit to meet his eyes.  “What do you want to do until they get back, Rumple?”  He shrugs, and she ponders for a moment.  “Do you want to read a story?”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t know how to read.”

“Well that’s all right, you’ll learn as you get older.”

“I know how to spin wool,” he says earnestly, his eyes wide.  “My aunts say I’m good at it.”

“I bet you’re very good at it!”  She smiles, taking his hands, loving his young pride.  “I bet one day you’ll even learn how to spin wonderful, magical things, like thread made out of pure gold.  But you’ll have to practice and work very hard.”

“I practice all the time.  I don’t have any friends to play with, and my aunts do all the chores, so I have lots of time to spin.”

Belle’s heart breaks at the words.  He says it so matter-of-factly that she would almost think he doesn’t mind it, but his tone is just too even, too practiced.  It’s the tone of someone who is resigned to his circumstances, not happy with them, and her heart breaks for him.  She had never given much of any thought to what Rumpelstiltskin might have been like before he became the man he is now.  But now, hearing this, knowing that he had hardly any friends, it seems a wonder that he ever learned to interact with the world at all.

“Well, surely you must have _some_ friends…” she pleads, hoping.

“No.”  He shakes his head, not so able to feign acceptance now.  “Nobody likes me, ‘cause of my papa.  Before he went away he did bad things and cheated people, and everyone said he was a coward.  Now nobody likes me because they think I’m like him, even though he’s not around anymore.”

Belle can only stare at him as he looks down at his shoes, hopeless and resigned and lonely.  It takes all her strength to keep her tears at bay, her heart breaking for the man who is most _definitely_ not who she thought he was.  “I’ll be your friend,” she says, just above a whisper.

His head snaps up, his big eyes desperate and hopeful.  “You will?”

She nods with a watery smile.  “Yes, I will be your friend.  And that way, even if you’re sad or worried or frustrated or anything else, you’ll know that you have me there to be your friend and to help cheer you up.  And we can talk to each other and tell each other stories, and we’ll have a wonderful time.  Would you like that?”

He all but throws himself into her arms, landing in her lap and hugging her tightly as he nods against her neck.  She holds him close, laughing, and he clings to her, utterly desperate for affection and a caring touch.  Seeing him before her now, it is so easy to see that he would have been like this as a child, but she suddenly finds herself wondering if the adult Rumpelstiltskin is like this too, just as desperate for kindness and affection and human contact.  The person in her arms is all at once so much sadder and kinder than she ever thought.

She already knew that his behavior was largely posturing and a guise, to keep others from seeing the real man underneath.  But it seems so obvious now that his behavior and personality, no matter how cruel and wrong it may be at times, is little more than a way to shield himself from the loneliness in his heart, a way to convince himself that he doesn’t want a genuine human connection, so that it will be less painful to be alone.  She wonders if the real man deep down is really just a vulnerable, lonely little boy who wants a friend and a hug.

Now that she thinks of it, when she hugged him those few weeks ago, after he chose not to kill the thief who broke into his castle, he was so stunned he didn’t even know what to do with himself, and it was the same later that night when she merely brushed her fingers over his arm.  Perhaps he did not react that way simply because he was unused to the contact or did not expect it.  Perhaps he was so stunned by it because even he did not realize how desperately he needed the connection.

“Will you come and live with us?”  The little voice pulls her out of her thoughts as he pulls back from her embrace just enough to look up at her, his eyes pleading.

“I live here, Rumple,” she tells him, smiling sadly, and his face falls.  “I have to stay here.  But I’ll tell you what: if you ever need a friend or feel lonely, you just come and find me and we can keep each other company, okay?”

He smiles again, like he can’t believe his good luck.  “Okay.”

She bops him gently on the nose.  “But you have to be kind if you want to be friends with someone.  You have to be nice to them and try to make them happy.  Can you do that?”

He nods earnestly and hugs her tight again.  “I promise I’ll be a good friend, Belle.  I _promise_.”

“I know you will, sweetheart.”  She holds him close for a while longer before pulling back.  “I’ll tell you what.  Why don’t I go get a book and I’ll read to you?”  He nods, smiling, and she lifts him back onto the table to stand.  “Okay.  You wait here and I’ll be right back.”

She crosses the castle to her own tower library, and takes a few minutes to pick out a suitable storybook.  As she makes her way back, she has to laugh at herself and the situation.  Only in the home of the Dark One.

“All right,” she calls, returning to his tower.  “I picked out my favorite book!  Well, one of my favorites, I –”

She stops short when she sees Rumpelstiltskin standing at his table, once again fully grown, decked in dragonhide leather, with glittering skin.

“And just what are you yelling about when I’m working?  This is very precise work and requires a great deal of concentration, you know.”

She moves slowly toward him, staring and watching his face very closely.  Does he not remember what happened just moments ago?  Did the magic erase his memory of the incident, just as it erased his memory of his entire adult life during those few minutes?  As she watches and moves, he glances sideways at her, waiting.

“Oh.  Well I was just, uh….”  She stares at him for a long pause, raising one eyebrow.  But all he does is stare back, his eyebrow going up as well.  Oblivious. 

She clears her throat, and remembers the piece of paper in her pocket.  “I was just, uh… bringing you this message.”  She pulls it out of her pocket and hands it to him.  “A dove flew in with it a little bit ago.”

“Ah.”  He plucks the tiny scroll out of her hands, and turns back to the table. “Very well, then.”

“So, uh… what are you working on exactly?”  She returns to the chair she occupied before, sitting without invitation.

“Why, exactly, do you ask?  Was the entire library I gave you not enough to fill your time?”

“Oh, no, no, the library is lovely.  I’m just…”  She shrugs, not sure how to do this now that all of his defenses are up again.  “I’m curious, I suppose.  About you, what you do.  If I’m going to be living here for the rest of my life, I thought we could… spend some time together.  Get to know one another a bit better.”

For a long while, he stares at her as if she has grown two heads, about as stunned and frightened as he was when she hugged him or touched his arm when he gifted her the library.  But she sees that little boy in his eyes, still, the shy, lonesome thing who just wanted a friend and companion, someone to share life with.  So she just smiles at him, open, patient, non-threatening.  She folds her hands primly in her lap and tilts her head, waiting.  Finally, he turns so she can’t see his face, and waves a non-committal hand, but she sees his shoulders relax just a bit.

“If you must,” he mutters, but he tells her about the potion he is working on, and she manages to keep from giggling when he expresses his confidence that he can make it work without a single hitch.

She smiles, glad for this lucky little turn of fate.


End file.
